Ask Don Paul: Is El Nino adding fuel to the global warming flame? - Buffalo News

Ask Don Paul: Is El Nino adding fuel to climate change fire?

Until late winter, the world was experiencing a rare 3 year stretch of La Nina conditions, during which cooler waters migrate eastward in the tropical Pacific, and help to produce some relative cooling on a global basis. In reality, what La Nina did during this period was slow the rate of global warming, rather than produce actual cooling. Now, La Nina is gone and El Nino is setting up. This will bring global warming impacts on the opposite end of the scale. We have gone from this, to

The basic differential impacts from these changes in global ocean circulation problems are significant, as can be seen in these North American graphics showing the transition from La Nina, to the average impact of El Nino.

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There are "a lack of strong signals for cooler than average temperatures prevailing in Western New York this summer," Don Paul writes.

This time around, models are suggesting the new El Nino may evolve into one of the infrequent strong El Ninos, with greater impacts. ( I wrote on this topic recently.)

The World Meteorological Organization/WMO has taken note of this strengthening tendency, which is appearing more potent as spring progresses toward summer. The reduction in the rate of warming during La Nina is now considered more likely to change to an accelerated rate of warming for several years. The warmth added to the atmosphere from El Nino’s changes in ocean circulation atop of the already-in-place baseline warming has a high probability of bringing the world its warmest year on record since the 19th century during the next 5 years. The previous warmest year occurred during 2016, following the onset of a strong El Nino. On the whole, WMO concludes what was reported in the NY Times: “There is a 98 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will exceed that, the forecasters said, while the average from 2023 to ’27 will almost certainly be the warmest for a five-year period ever recorded.”

“This will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the environment,” said Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the meteorological organization. “We need to be prepared.”

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The warming trend for Buffalo, particularly compared to 20th century averages, is indisputable. Warming is the new normal.

What must be remembered is that even small increases in warming can produce disastrous impacts. A 2021 June heat wave in the Pacific Northwest with some links to climate change killed hundreds of people in western Canada, Washington and Oregon. It sparked tremendous wildfires and brought an all time record high temperature to northwest Washington of 120 degrees in Hanford.

One of these next 5 years has a two thirds chance of bringing the world for the first time to the threshold of a 1.5 degree Celsius/2.7 degrees Fahrenheit increase in average temperature since the 19th century average. This is the benchmark from which most climate scientists believe global warming impacts begin to head closer to worst case scenarios in mid and late century, rather than still serious but more tolerable scenarios. One temporary saving grace is that this spike would recede to some slightly cooler temperature following the departure of this El Nino, rather than permanently taking us past this critical tipping point. The true passing of this threshold would need to persist for more than a decade, in order to filter out the natural variability of weather events from climate change.

"The goal of not surpassing a global mean temperature increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial temperatures is becoming more unlikely to fulfill," writes Don Paul.

As things stand now, apart from this El Nino-linked spike, most climate scientists have conservative models pointing to a true long term passing of the +1.5 degree Celsius threshold beginning as soon as the early 2030s, unless the world and industrialized nations take prompt, drastic steps to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and alter our energy-intensive agricultural technology.

The half degree difference between a 1.5 Celsius rise and a 2.0 Celsius rise may not sound like much, but the drastic impact changes have been modeled and are laid out in this New York Times article.

The fact is, each extra 0.1 degree increase adds to humankind’s burden during this century and beyond. A rise of 0.5 degrees is a "big deal."

The WMO and other agencies have pointed to some relative progress as more nations are investing more in alternative fuels and technologies. At one point, the cataclysmic upper range of a 4 degree Celsius increase was the worst case scenario, but the limited global progress has taken that far-end extreme off the table. On the other hand, after a brief blip downward in fossil fuel use during the pandemic, it now appears that 2022 carbon emissions reached a new record high, with a further increase likely this year. In any case, there is broad scientific consensus that the world has only a few years in which to act to lessen the severity of impacts yet to come.